PAYE93070 - taxpayer end of year: reviewing liability at year end: open cases and review procedures - good practice
Cases will appear on the eOpen List (eOL) in the relevant
workload dependant upon the reason why the case has not been
cleared. There are 8 workloads.
Further information about eOL can be found in the Employee
end of year, eOpen List FAQ’s on the COP website.
You should take particular care when reviewing Open Cases as
failure to follow procedures will lead to increased re-working and
reduced customer service.
The remainder of this subject is presented as follows
General guidance
COP leaver cases and SA links
Reviewing a year already cleared ‘Z’
NNL cases
Open cases selection CY-1
Form P92 / P91
COP Function DC
Coding
General guidance
You should be particularly careful to pay attention to the following points
- Update COP Function CS Format 2 correctly, to show the total pay and tax information for the year, so that accurate information is available to calculate ESTPAY or ESTINC coding entries
- CY and CY+1 coding must be reviewed when a case is worked
- Informal calculations must not be issued for cases that include benefits where the P11D information has not been received
- When a case is reviewed, it should always be cleared where there is sufficient information held at the time of review to enable you to do so. Where there are no DC details and pay and tax details are traced through e-Services Filestore, NIRS2 and so on, the record should be updated, but left for the system to clear
- ENOTES and HNOTES should be made wherever these are required, for example, when setting the POTA signal
- Signals should be kept up to date
- Ensure that all possible action is taken to prevent open case entry in future years
- Where a case should be transferred to SA, make sure that all the relevant action is taken at the time
- When a record is no longer live, check that all signals that are no longer relevant have been removed
- Where there are benefits that are treated as ‘assessed and allowed’ the amount of benefit shown on the P11D and the amount claimed must both be recorded in informal calculation when the P11D is captured
COP leaver cases and SA links
Occasionally when a COP record is noted as a leaver the SA link
breaks and a year has to be cleared on COP as well as on SA because
there is no SA indicator on the COP record.
To prevent this happening, where a case appears on eOL and
previous years have been cleared SA, and a P810 has not been
issued, you should
- Check SA to see if an income tax return has been issued for the year in question and, if so
- Clear the COP record SA once the pay and tax details have posted
Reviewing a year already cleared ‘Z’
If when reviewing a year you find that a previous year has been incorrectly cleared ‘Z’ you should review / re-open that year if necessary and issue any repayment that may be due. You should consider also whether ESC A19 applies before deciding what action to take.
NNL cases
Do not make an Informal calculation on an employee who has no net tax liability. If the employer has deducted tax you must
- Use Function CS to check if there is an underpayment for an earlier year. If so then this should be set off against the repayment
- Consider whether you need a signed request for repayment
- Use Function AS to repay where applicable
Open case selection CY-1
When the open case selection processes run in COP, they will follow similar rules to those for the Initial Review
- HRS signals will be set where appropriate
- Where form P810 has been issued and remains outstanding the case will be left open. The reason will be given as ‘P810 OUTSTANDING’
- GCD records where pay or tax exceed the higher rate review limits will be cleared if appropriate
Form P92 / Form P91
Form P92
must be used when you are reviewing open cases and
requesting information for a past tax year.
Note: You should only approach the customer for
information that HMRC
does not already hold. Before issuing form P92 you
should therefore check all relevant systems, for example, PAYE
Browser, E-Services Filestore, NIRS, eOpen List and so on.
It is not necessary to BF all cases following the issue of
form P92. If the only reason for a potential repayment is because
of a gap in employment exceeding 10 consecutive weeks in any one
tax year that the P92 is intended to cover, the case can be cleared
Z when the P92 is issued. For further instructions see the Action
Guide at
PAYE93073.
Form P91 should only be used where we are requesting the
information during the year in order to restore cumulative
coding.
COP Function DC
You should not use COP Function DC to record any P14 details.
You must wait for the details to be posted automatically to COP by
NIRS.
If a customer submits their P60 to claim a repayment before
P14 details have been automatically posted you should satisfy
yourself that full details for all employments are held before
making the repayment. In these cases you should then update COP
Function CS Format 2 with the total pay and tax details.
Coding
When reviewing any cases where the code includes ESTPAY it will sometimes be necessary to use information that is included on the P14. For most cases, ESTPAY will be set automatically on the system based on the 2005-06 P14. You must check the PAYE Browser to ensure that you identify the correct amount of income for each individual employment where
- The 2006-07 consolidated P14 information is posted to the record and
- You need to use more up to date figures of ESTPAY in Coding Assistant and
- The individual had more than one employment in 2006-07
